In Sin and Error Pining
by etraytin
Summary: It's not entirely impossible to lose what you never had in the first place. Missing Scene/Scene Expansion for Holy Night.


Author's Note: Check it out, back-to-back Holy Night fics! It really is quite a good episode, even if it pales in comparison to In Excelsis Deo and Noel. Those are hard acts to follow! Another Tumblr promptfic.

actuallylorelaigilmore asked: "Since I just read your Holy Night story, what about CJ/Danny from Holy Night, something we didn't see? I've always loved how his surprise return seemed to light her up after that year of mourning Simon."

(Disclaimer: This story contains dialogue taken verbatim from the West Wing episode Holy Night. No commercial use is being made of this work, and all rights remain with the original creator.)

…...

CJ wasn't much of a fan of White House traditions. She liked how the look of the building changed from season to season, but as the only female member of the senior staff, plus the press secretary, she found herself dumped into the West Wing Cruise Director position more often than she'd have liked. Whether it was coordinating groups of schoolchildren on visits, pardoning turkeys or arranging for the delivery of thousands of hard-boiled eggs for the lawn, holiday traditions tended to just be one more headache. So she was a little surprised at how disappointed she felt to miss her own press room's Christmas tradition of a reporter in a threadbare Santa suit overseeing the final secret santa gift exchanges. When Santa actually appeared at her door anyway, she felt a little bit six years old again, and it was delightful.

The goldfish pin was a little surprising too, a bit of a step up from the coffee mugs and fruit baskets she tended to receive as gifts. Everybody in the press room knew Gail, though, even if most of them did not know her origin story. For some reason, though, she wanted to explain it to Santa, thought he ought to be in on the joke. She started telling him about the guy, and was more than a little startled when he leaned in to give her a surprisingly thorough kiss. For a moment she stiffened, surprised and indignant, but then she caught the scent of spearmint gum and beard oil, and caught sight of red whiskers under the white. She felt considerably better about the kiss, despite the press secretary instincts shrieking at her to get the hell off the podium. "Danny?"

He pulled off the hat and voluminous white beard and grinned at her. "What's going on?" he asked, as though he'd never been gone, as though they'd never had those words in the Oval Office, as though everything was okay and always had been with them. She threw her arms around him, hugging his padded body tight and letting the warmth of him begin thawing a little of the ice she'd been carrying around inside since a cold spring night in New York City. His arms slid around her back and pulled her close, and she forgot about being on the podium, and all the really good reasons this couldn't happen. Luckily, before she could say or do anything, he spoke again. "So this costume weighs about forty pounds. Mind if I strip off a couple layers?"

She laughed and pulled back, leading the way down the stairs to the door. "You can use my office."

Despite her disdain of tradition, CJ loved her office at Christmastime. The White House housekeeping staff always made everything so pretty with wreaths and lights, so that her office smelled like pine for a month and when she was particularly tired, she could turn off the top lights and see by the multicolored twinkle strands for a little while. Even Gail's bowl was decorated, though CJ still hadn't figured out if that was the decorating staff, or Carol, or some unknown party with a vast assortment of goldfish bowl statuary. The last holdout of propriety in her brain made her leave the office door open as she escorted him inside, though it hardly mattered with so many people scurrying home ahead of the weather. Even Carol was off somewhere, probably seducing a Whiffenpoof.

Danny shrugged out of the heavy red coat and hung it on her coat rack, then stripped off the fluffy layer of padding beneath and dropped it on the couch. Underneath that, for what could've been no reason but whimsy, he was wearing all red shirt and pants, with Santa Claus suspenders. CJ found herself charmed, and for once didn't fight the feeling. She ran her fingers under one strap of the suspenders to admire them. "Very stylish," she remarked.

"Accessories make the man," he claimed, his voice a little choked from the effect of her fingers on his chest. "I hope I'm not keeping you from your Christmas plans."

"It's not so much you as fourteen inches of snow," she told him, gesturing to the window. "My flight to Dayton got canceled an hour ago, so assuming I can get back to Georgetown tonight, that's where I'll be spending Christmas."

"That's a shame, I hear Dayton at the holidays is really something," Danny quipped, standing near her desk while she put papers away and turned off the news channels that were now showing old documentaries and yule logs.

"Don't knock it till you've tried it," she told him. "Rike's Wonderland Windows are not to be missed."

"I'll have to try and get out there to see them sometime," he said, watching her with an intensity that was almost unnerving. Almost, but not quite. It was also challenging, invigorating. God, she really had missed him. Just having him in the room was turning her into some kind of idiot.

"What are you doing for the holidays?" she asked, finally coming to a stop in front of him, just a foot away. In her heels, she had a good three or four inches on him in height. Some men found that unfeminine and unattractive. Danny had never seemed to mind. "Are you staying in town?"

"I'll be in town for awhile," he told her with a half-smile, holding up his newly reissued press room credentials. "Haven't really nailed down any Christmas plans yet."

It was on the tip of CJ's tongue to ask him to have a drink with her, but she couldn't quite get the words out. Not yet anyway. Maybe by the end of the evening. "So, Africa?" she said instead. "What was that like?"

"Kind of like reporting on the White House, but with more actual lions," he told her, and settled down into her visitor's chair for a talk. CJ had forgotten how much she liked to hear him talk, just to hear the sound of his voice. Despite being a print reporter, Danny was a skilled raconteur, and his stories of travel in Africa and further abroad were funny and engaging. With the lid on and the twinkle lights shining and Danny's stories in her ears, CJ let herself relax more than she ever did in the White House, laughing and sitting down next to him as he tried to explain the foibles of cricket and the people who loved it.

She was not, however, quite relaxed enough not to notice when he dropped the phrase "a guy whose name I'm not gonna tell you right now," into a cheerful conversation about his scooter trip through Bermuda. It was the sort of phrase that raised her press secretary radar and suddenly had her wondering where all this was going. Danny obviously had a point he was driving at, laying out a timeline, laying out facts, laying out suppositions. While he was doing that, CJ sat very still and listened carefully, while simultaneously reassembling all the pieces of White House Press Secretary armor she'd shed in the past half-hour and putting them back on as quickly as she could. It felt colder than usual, perhaps because she'd taken it off for a little bit.

The story Danny told was wild, barely plausible, and yet CJ was struck at how many things slotted neatly into place if it were true. She hadn't exactly been herself in the days following Simon's death, but she had been at work, and she'd noticed all the closed-door meetings going on, closed not only to her but to all of senior staff besides Leo. The President had been in a very strange mood for quite awhile there, and even now tended to be a bit iffy on certain matters of foreign policy. CJ wished she'd been paying more attention, all the while knowing that she couldn't have. Suddenly he was done with his story and watching her, expecting a response from her.

CJ gathered herself, took a deep breath. Did her job. "This is like something you'd get off the internet." Rising, she skirted around him to go back behind the shielding bulk of her desk, resume her position of power in the room and in the building.

Danny understood the gesture immediately, standing and turning to face her. "I'm back. And I'm happy about it. And I think you know how I feel about you, but don't mess me around on this story, okay? The three guys out front were US Army Rangers." He paused, again waiting for a response from her, but she just dropped her gaze. "I gotta change my clothes." He left, and she watched him in silence, listening to him flirt lightly with Carol as he headed back to the press room. Once he was out of sight, she left too, heading towards Leo's office. She had a job to do, and the last thing she wanted right now was to sit in her office, watching the snow and remembering what it felt like to be warm.


End file.
